There isn’t anyone alive today that has not experienced pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, relationship pain, financial pain, even spiritual pain. We don’t like it, but yet it is something we will experience throughout the course of our life. We often attempt to avoid pain and hurt by avoiding conflict, finding medicines to dull our pain, and trying to not think about the negative. But, maybe instead of escaping the pain, we should instead embrace it. We will have troubles, the Bible even says we will have them in the Gospel of John (John 16:33). But we are also promised that Jesus has overcome the world. He has taken on our pain and hurt from this broken world and overcome it through His death and resurrection.
It is impossible to escape pain from a broken world, the world that was never designed to be this way in the first place. It wasn’t supposed to be so messed up. We weren’t meant to be so messed up, but it was our choice, at least it was Adam and Eve’s choice to follow their own way and lead us all down the path of brokenness, pain, hurt, suffering and ultimately death.
So why should we embrace this pain? Well, maybe we need to realize that as we are moving forward in this life, down our own paths, maybe, just maybe, we can find some redeeming quality to this pain. Maybe our pain will make us smarter, stronger, and more hopeful than we would be if we hadn’t experienced it. I know of a woman who is posting videos on her journey through cancer. She is creating this documentary, that if anything, inspires me to take each day as a blessing from God and to live each day intentionally, enjoying what I love to do. Her pain is joy to others. It inspires others. I’m sure she does not want this cancer journey filled with both physical and emotional pain. But she is finding peace and joy amidst her struggle as she allows her self to be vulnerable about her own fears, including death.
I have also considered my own journey through grief of losing my mom. This pain that I still feel has brought me much closer to God. And maybe that is the greatest reason to embrace pain. For when it is at its greatest, its most hurtful and bitter as if it is a knife plunging into the flesh, it is then that we cry out most earnestly to God. And He hears. When we are done trying to figure everything our for ourselves, and are completely undone, we fall at His feet and let Him pick us up as a parent scoops up their crying child. -God Bless Nancy
Moving Forward 